Kim Jong Un is doing everything he can to keep North Korea’s youth in line

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Kim Jong Un enjoys absolute power across North Korea and is regarded as godlike by his own people. But one threat appears to loom large for the 41-year-old dictator: disloyalty from his country’s youth.

He is particularly worried about the foreign media trickling into his information-repressed country, affording North Koreans a rare glimpse into the outside world via Hollywood films or K-pop albums. Possessing or distributing such content—which Kim refers to as “dangerous poisons"—carries ever-stiffer penalties, even death. At risk is Kim’s ability to maintain the illusion of North Korea as a socialist paradise, which is key to his ability to maintain power.

And no group is more vulnerable to ideological slippage than North Korea’s youngest citizens. That is why Kim has handed a central propaganda role of late to the Paektusan Hero Youth Shock Brigade. Named for the country’s sacred mountain, the group of teenagers and 20-somethings has been recently hailed as national heroes for helping to rebuild a western border region leveled by summer floods.

Over four months, they erected 15,000 houses, schools and hospitals, the country’s state media claimed. The youth shock brigade’s 300,000 members—about the population of Pittsburgh—had reportedly mobilized at a moment’s notice and volunteered to go, state media said. In a speech last month, Kim, who calls himself the group’s “benevolent father," showered the fresh-faced members with praise, having earlier challenged them to express their regime loyalty by carrying out the manual-labor project.